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14-letter words containing i, s, t

  • biometric risk — Biometric risk covers all risks related to human life conditions, such as death, birth, disability, age, and number of children.
  • bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
  • bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
  • biostatistical — relating to biostatistics
  • biosystematics — the study of the variation and evolution of a population of organisms in relation to their taxonomic classification
  • biosystematist — someone who studies or works professionally in the field of biosystematics
  • bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
  • bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
  • bird sanctuary — an area of land in which birds are protected and encouraged to breed
  • birthing stool — a stool constructed to allow a woman in labour to give birth in a sitting position
  • biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
  • biscuit-firing — the first firing given to pottery, before it is glazed
  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
  • bite one's lip — If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.
  • bitmap display — (hardware)   A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
  • bits per pixel — (hardware, graphics)   (bpp) The number of bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed by a graphics adapter. The more bits there are, the more colours can be represented, but the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can be described by the intensities of red, green and blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 bits (1 byte) per component (24 bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 bpp (or 15 bpp), 5 bits for blue, 5 bits for red and 6 bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-bit colour depths, including an 8-bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects.
  • bitter cassava — a species of cassava (Manihot esculenta) whose poisonous roots when processed yield tapioca starch
  • black as night — totally dark
  • blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
  • blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
  • blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
  • blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
  • blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
  • blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
  • blind staggers — the staggers
  • blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
  • blister beetle — any beetle of the family Meloidae, many of which produce a secretion that blisters the skin
  • blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
  • blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
  • block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
  • blood boosting — a procedure in which an athlete is injected with erythropoietin, his or her own blood, or the blood of a family member prior to competition, purportedly increasing the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity as a result of the addition of red blood cells.
  • blue mountains — a mountain range in the US, in NE Oregon and SE Washington. Highest peak: Rock Creek Butte, 2773 m (9097 ft)
  • boatswain bird — tropic bird.
  • body of christ — the Christian Church
  • body snatching — the act or practice of robbing a grave to obtain a cadaver for dissection.
  • bolshoi ballet — a ballet company founded in Moscow in 1776.
  • bone turquoise — fossilized bone or tooth stained blue with iron phosphate and used as a gemstone
  • bonus question — a question in a quiz which earns a contestant extra points
  • border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
  • boston terrier — a short stocky smooth-haired breed of terrier with a short nose, originally developed by crossing the French and English bulldogs with the English bull terrier
  • bosworth field — the site, two miles south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, of the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses (August 1485). Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor was crowned king as Henry VII
  • bottom fishing — investing in low-priced shares that show prospects of recovery or in shares that are low-priced because of a general market decline in the hope of making a profit
  • bottomless pit — If you describe a supply of something as bottomless, you mean that it seems so large that it will never run out.
  • bound moisture — Bound moisture is liquid in a solid, which exerts a vapor pressure that is less than the pure liquid would do at the same temperature.
  • bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
  • boy-meets-girl — conventionally or trivially romantic
  • branchiostegal — of or relating to the operculum covering the gill slits of fish
  • brandy snifter — snifter (def 1).
  • brass farthing — something of little or no value
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